Linked by Martin Girard on Tue 12th Sep 2006 13:57 UTC
You must remember the period where various electronic devices, from phones to radios, were available in transparent cases. You may have found them utterly cool. Yet the simple fact that you can't find these things on the shelves anymore (except for do-it-yourself PC cases) means the crowd doesn't find them nearly that cool. While you may not see the link yet, this is exactly why the Linux desktop will never be popular.
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Member since:
2006-04-21
The Windows Registry "cleans things up" in the same way that the Exxon Valdez cleaned up large parts of Alaskan wildlife. Linux stores system-wide configuration in /etc, and sometimes in /usr/X11R6, with user-customised configuration in files *named after the app* in their home directory.
If Linux were more like Windows, but still used plain text files for configuration, some of the system wide stuff would be in users' home directories, some of the user-specific stuff would be in /etc, and most of both would be in /opt/$APPLICATION/$SM_NON-STNDRD_APP-SPCFC_DIR. Worse, whilst a computer if need be can easily convert a text file to a binary format, how many humans do you know who can easily convert an undocumented binary format to a text file?
If Linux were more like Windows and it used a Registry, administrators would constantly bitch about how difficult it was to fix, and how just about every application installation, configuration change, or foul-up would need a reboot and/or reinstallation. All else being equal, Linux would have got exactly NOWHERE on the desktop, and server administrators would look at it and say "Look! Now you can have all the disadvantages of Unix, with all the disadvantages of Windows!"
Edited 2006-09-12 16:44